Same axiom holds true for #SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud ), as an integrated offering from IBM. Now can you, really ignore ANY OF THEM leave alone ALL OF THEM !!!

The recent opening of IBM Customer Experience Lab Unveiling New Social, Mobile and Big Data Innovations to Help C-Suite Leaders got me thinking in the wave that SMAC is stacking ! A lab to introduce FOAK solutions must mean investment, backed by a very ROI centric logic. And am not surprised. After all IBM Watson Winning Jeopardy must make the super-computer commercial. And when you talk about AI, the nexus-mixes of SMAC can't be far behind. Even simplest of front office digitization has it all 'SMAC'd'. IBM's presence in US OPen Tennis - a 20year association that single handedly will make it referential.

And this isn't new, around the corner phenomenon. Its is soon becoming a professional capability if ever-evolving enterprises are making is deemed to hire skills on this. And why won't it be?!? When Forbes published "Why CIOs Are Quickly Prioritizing Analytics, Cloud and Mobile" it was just implying what has been well predicted and documented - that SMAC matters.

"As per PwC’s Digital IQ Survey India Inc’s investment consistently surpasses its global counterparts in all aspects of SMAC with 42 percent of Indian companies investing in social media as part of external communications for customers and suppliers (global average 33 percent), 48 percent investment in public cloud applications (global average 24 percent) and 40 percent in adopting mobile technologies for customers (global average 31 percent)."

Acc. toVirtualization Journal "The Industrial Internet and SMAC" the usability of SMAC is beyond handful of large enterprises. But instead encompasses a more generic needs cutting across all sectors. To them, The Industrial Internet refers to the world of connected sensors on people, equipment, machines, parts, assets, vehicles, inventory, etc. -- citing GE jet engine, where every part is connecting with wireless sensors...

'Don’t Get SMACked: How Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud Technologies are Reshaping the Enterpriseby Malcolm Frank , Cognizant Executive Vice President, Strategy & Marketing . He see's the movement from " widget to digits ... unfurling the The Value Chain: “Unchained” by Social Technologies ... all hurtling towards knowldge transformation ". He lays claim on SMAC Stack powering all - "Craigslist and Wikipedia stand as extreme, yet simple, examples of dematerialization: the process by which material-based value chains go virtual". He's taking about rising the Fifth Wave of technology. " The power of disruptive business models — such as those pioneered by Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Google, etc. — originates from managing SMAC technologies as an integrated stack and fundamentally enabling business models by using this integrated technology stack".

We see heavy permutations that SMAC throws-in, as probability with/without possibility.I know for solutions from IBM like IBM Edge Analytics,Vibes, Social Media Event Tracker Tool (SMETT), all are positioned to play to SMAC needs. Even #Gartner's annual survey of CIOs includes 2,300 respondents located in 44 countries clearly lists SMAC as CIO's preferred choice - their next big bet! Gartner's 'The Nexus of Forces' has it all attested - few player would like to be left behind without SMAC on their lips !!!

An imagination or innovation catches on, like in less than few decades, is truly noteworthy. We can't deny the indomitable place that mobile computing stack-up from its 90's bubble to a full blown legacy application that Apple ipad's or various smart phones that dot the market - end-users increasingly becoming smaller in age < 4yr olds !!! > while angry birds keep the fingers, sticky !

Remember the Palm pilot 1000 digital planner that was coasting around late 90's? Even slinky digital diary looked 'heavy'. PDAs (personal Digital Assistant) took over entire techworld by rage - a new OS ; contesting which, Microsoft built much of the desktop business as drag-innovation on MS Windows CE . But Palm held on to its 'innovation' consumerism into the OS market untill Apple gave in a burst of 'interface' with Apple iBook G3 Wi-Fi enabled laptop. Thereafter the mobile computing market went to whole host of evolution. But still, the market matured at much rapid speed wrt time.

But its also the sheer outreach! According to World bank report on Mobile computing " The number of mobile subscriptions in low- and middle-income countries increased by more than 1,500 percent between 2000 and 2010, from 4 to 72 per 100 inhabitants". What takes its importance to another level is amount of millionairs it churned - just thru applications! Angry birds !!!

So how much mobile computing is going to see more innovation that is gadget driven?

Till there is a ‘yin to try’ there cant be a ‘yang’ far away in terms of a game; a challenge! What really makes a cool ‘versus’ is a Man Vs THE MACHINE gaming! And that will always be a “jeopardy”… if not a double one at that. IBM Watson- Jeopardy is more than that ... its in making of an epic. Anything with a Super Computer is 'somthing'.

Like Tron the creation becomes as much a complete diorama of ‘computing’capability showcase. What more can be artificial, than intelligence i.e., AI. So we set a level playing fieldto test the turf of Watson, the recently launched “Analytical computing system that specializes in natural human language and provides specific answers to complex question at rapid speed “ lead by Dr.Dave Ferruci, IBM…which btwtrounced the actual Jeopardy Winners: Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter by a slim margin of $1000 in practice session.

BTW: Double Jeopardy itself is an enigma, legally. One of the most challenged and longest standing law, dating back to 12th century, is still in its Quixotic best. It is very fitting that such a namesake game is played if at all with aSuper Computer!!! A size of 10 refrigerators < anybody for Virtualization or Green Data Centre> powered by 10racks of IBMPOWER 750 serversrunning on Linux, using 15 terabytes RAM created by a team of 25 scientists in 4years, with 2,880 processor core, operating at 80 teraflops < 80trillion operations per sec> . And it was fed with 200million pages to scan 2million pages in less than 3 second .. to interpret the very primal human advantage – “Language”.

Whatz in Java & Cloud? I listened to this interesting podcast from developerWorks Java special “Sacha Labourey on abstracting the cloud to work better for Java developers” which kinda made me deliberate more on what more can innovation mean? Incidentally, Sacha is the founder for CloudBees < and an ex-CTO of Jboss > evangelizes on how ‘tooling’ is vital for cloud’s efficacy …

Do you agree with Sacha that an effective set of tools for application lifecycle in cloud (including Continuous Integration a la Hudson-as-a-service) can make for a competition to Google AppEngine in PaaS? Anyways, I got into exploring one-step more (mind-it, just a tiny footprint in my search for know-how) to walk into ZdNet’s exposition on competitive evaluation between GAE & Amazon Web Services … which basically takes back to the Web2.0 turf! Will there actually be a PaaS war or we just looking at maturation of Cloud as truly ‘open’ platform for developers than a package wrap of licenses and their elk…. with much in need of standards??